


way of the world

by milkshakemecha



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Mafia AU, non explicit mentions of dissolving a dead body???, non explicit mentions of earth wind and fire, non explicit mentions of racist attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-25 00:26:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21347266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milkshakemecha/pseuds/milkshakemecha
Summary: “I know how this looks, dear, but trust me, he meant nothing.” Claude calls out to her from the kitchen, smiling, twirling his hips like he’s slow-dancing at the school formal when the teacher’s not watching. “Too brutish for my liking.”Claude, Hilda, a dead body, a pumpkin spice latte, and implied disco.
Relationships: Hilda Valentine Goneril/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 7
Kudos: 30





	way of the world

Claude dances like one of those smooth disco tracks from the mid-70s. There’s flow, there’s joy, there’s the passion of life, the tiredness of age, the hopefulness of tomorrow.

There is also whiskey. Judith’s favorite brand, procured straight from the source. Judith’s crafty like that.

Hilda enters Claude’s apartment twenty minutes after noon, twenty minutes later than she was meant to, carrying something caffeinated and pumpkin spiced, with only the slightest irritation showing in her expression.

The pleasing scent of autumn cafe drinks is soon overwhelmed by the pungent stench of death. The corpse lies on Claude’s couch, eyes open, with one hand on the torso. The rigor mortis is setting in.

Unbelievable. He wants her to fucking _work_.

“I know how this looks, dear, but trust me, he meant nothing.” Claude calls out to her from the kitchen, smiling, twirling his hips like he’s slow-dancing at the school formal when the teacher’s not watching. “Too brutish for my liking.”

Hilda stares over her rose pink glasses. “Insult your peonies, did he?”

Claude scoffs, faking a wounded pout. “Hilda, dear, you know they’re marigolds.”

She rolls her eyes as she picks her way through the living room. The floor is littered with notebooks and folders. Scattered photographs dot the floor as well, forming a loose trail to his bedroom.

Claude, for his part, seems to have cleaned himself up. His clothes look clean and newly pressed; the faint smell of cologne touches the air. He stops dancing to grab Hilda’s drink, tipping his head back with the eagerness of someone who’s spent the whole day doing it.

“That was mine,” Hilda says, half-faked exasperation laced in her words.

“Should’ve brought two. Now, about the cadaver smelling up the fucking place. I was thinking lye.”

Hilda watches Claude stretch, roll up his sleeves just below the elbow, and get to work. From his pantry, he takes two heavy crates, labeled on the sides in smudged black paint that reads “BEER.” The body, she knows, will go in a large, oddly-shaped container that most people assume carries some kind of obscure instrument.

They look normal, carefully coming down the steps of Claude’s building with their cello or bass or perhaps imported collapsed theremin and their crates that most certainly do not contain a single drop of “BEER.” They’re a musical duo, ready for a long night of gigs played straight out of their van, or perhaps performing at a BYOB house party for the exposure. Their lie is not merely left unquestioned; it is kept in the thoughts of his neighbors for a quiet moment, a time to think to pleasant little platitudes about that guy next door or across the lot and his pink-haired friend.

The warehouse Claude rents for something quite beyond dirt cheap is sparse: it houses little other than a small collection of bones (to be sent along as a threat for the next poor sap to go digging into his history) and two tattered armchairs (pinched from a garage sale for actual dirt cheap.)

They drop the body on the ground, naked skin slapping against the cold concrete floor. The echo is dreadful.

“Ugh, that echo is dreadful.” Claude says, his face twisted in disgust. “Shame I don’t actually play any instruments. The acoustics in here are beautiful.”

Hilda takes a bottle of sodium hydroxide. She holds it at arm’s length, a difficult task, but Claude’s always admired her deceptive strength. “You told Ignatz you play the bass.”

“I told Ignatz because he was cute and I didn’t feel like going through the effort of a full blown deflection.”

She sets the bottle down next to a rusted barrel. “Are you saying I’m not cute enough for a lie?” Hilda picks her voice up at the end, light and breathy like a reincarnation of a 1950s sex symbol.

Claude smirks, ever the leading man. “I’ll come over and tell you when we’re done.”

Hilda smiles.

Claude drags the barrel to the center of the floor. They lift the body and deposit it feet first. From there, it’s a slow wait for the mixture of sodium hydroxide and water to dissolve 200 pounds of flesh.

“Poison, right?”

“What can I say? It’s the method that suits me best.” Although his tone is carefree, his face betrays a colder demeanor. He’s sobering up and whatever joke that has carried him throughout the day is no longer funny.

A morbid concept sometimes crosses Hilda’s mind is being held at gunpoint and forced to reveal her innermost thoughts. Some of them were low-level childhood secrets she never cared to commit to a diary, others more lingering doubts and insecurities. But the one thing she would rather die than admit was that she found Claude intimidating. Information like that always made its way back to him and he would never let her live it down.

But the intimidation isn’t a direct feeling; she doesn’t look at him and feel the uncertainty of whether or not she’s about to be his next victim. It’s a hypothetical feeling, an alternate universe where she isn’t his confidante and doesn’t know what he thinks of her. She’s smart enough, that other Hilda, to know that he doesn’t always tell the truth, that there’s not a complete sincerity behind his warm, easy smile. But she’s not in his ear, his heart, his mind all different hours of the day.

Other Hilda doesn’t _know_ him, and she doesn’t know what Other Claude thinks of her. She’s smart enough, that Hilda, to discern a simple lie, perhaps, but not so tuned into his every little frequency that she’ll be able to guess when the corner of his upturned lips is tinged with venom and not honey.

Other Hilda can’t handle this moment, when the joke has died and Claude’s rage, this Hilda knows, is simmering.

“I’m guessing this one wasn’t hired.”

“No, he wasn’t.” The lone wolf hustlers always offend him more. They think they’re untouchable and hate that he actually is. “Didn’t take too kindly to my criticizing his business, so he thought he’d just nose his way into mine.”

Claude sighs, a little bit of humor, a little bit of weariness weaved into the sound. “I know I’m ambitious, Hil, but Christ, the whole city? The whole _city_? You’d think they’d find something else to do once in a while.” He speaks half-heartedly, because he knows, within his soul and his bones, exactly why he is such a target.

Hilda watches him pace, ten steps in either direction. The body sinks lower and lower into the barrel until there’s nothing but coffee-colored liquid and floating bones. Claude picks up the remains of a finger with a gloved hand.

“You know,” his tone is thoughtful, brighter, like he’s shaken off his melancholy, “I think he was just mad that I’m more handsome than him.” He crushes the finger, fine dust falling from his hand to the floor.

Hilda is suddenly grateful they’ve never fucked on it.

They burn the bones in another barrel and with that, it’s like there never was a corpse.

“So, got any plans?”

“Other than you owing me a latte?”

“I’ll buy you the whole goddamn cafe if you’ll come with me to tell that bastard’s crew that he’s dead.” Claude’s smirking now, fire burning in his chestnut eyes.

He doesn’t have to make grand promises like that, not to her, but he does because he’s Claude: grand and ambitious are woven into his DNA.

She links her arm with his, leans her head on his shoulder, and says “I guess that works.”

They step out into the night, covered by a moonlit sky. The walk is long, but as they reach their destination, surrounded by blazing neon signs, a hand each on their preferred weapons, it feels as though the night has just begun.

**Author's Note:**

> peonies, in part, symbolize honor. marigolds for passion. is there proper linear logic in mentioning these? probably not. but there's also a clip that was a vine at one point and color symbolism, so make of all that what you will, folks.


End file.
